What Can Michael Myers Teach Us About Digital Marketing?

It’s the 40th anniversary of the American horror classic Halloween, so we must pay homage to the slasher film [cue the creepy music]. While Hollywood has released yet another movie to celebrate the milestone, we’re writing this blog as our own personal toast. Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis – this one’s for you. As for all marketers out there, stay with us because you’re in for a treat, or two.

As a marketer, if you’re looking to get some insight into digital marketing and are very much in the Halloween spirit, this blog post is for you. Believe it or not, there are a few things Michael Myers can teach us about digital marketing. Here they are.

Know Your Audience

All great slasher films have a target victim type (don’t worry we won’t get too morbid here). Michael Myers went after babysitters (at least in the original Halloween), Scream’s masked man preyed on college students, and Hitchcock had a thing for casting blonde actresses in all of his movies.

In paralleling this to digital marketing – yes, it’s possible – you must have a target audience defined in your marketing strategy. So, if you’re marketing to EVERYONE just to see that estimated number go into the millions if not billions, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Quantity is not better than quality. Why not? When you market to everyone, you cast a wide net and attract people who aren’t your ideal customer. These people will never buy from you. Why waste your time and financial resources marketing to someone who’s never going to buy from you? Attract the people who are more likely to buy your product or service.

Before launching a new marketing initiative, define your personas to identify your ideal customer. Your personas are profiles of specific audience types that include demographics, interests, and behaviors. Focusing on target audiences will help increase your conversion rates and achieve your marketing goals.

Have a Strategy

Do you think Michael Myers just showed up expecting to get his first kill without a plan? Well, we never got to see the inner workings of the masked killer, but if he didn’t have a plan, he would have never been so successful. Similarly, you can’t just expect to show up in a competitive industry with a product or service that no one knows about, under the umbrella of a new brand, and expect the product to sell itself. You have to have a goal, and a clear strategy to achieve that goal.

Are you wanting to build brand awareness, bring in more leads, or drive sales? Start there first, then carve out a plan for getting there, including a proper timeline, and measurable deliverables.

Be Confident and Go All In

Be strict about following your timeline and executing your plan. Michael Myers never hesitated to creep up to his target. And we never saw him walk away once he was on screen. You may not need the creepy theme song, but you do need to exercise some confidence.

If you have everything you need to promote your brand, product, service, go for it. And see it all the way through. Many times, clients won’t see performance right out of the gates and want to pause everything during week two or three. Be patient. Give your campaign at least a month. This will give you enough time to monitor the performance, capture stats, and draw conclusions as to what’s working and why, what’s not working and why. Then you can make tweaks and change course, if necessary.

If at First You Don’t Succeed…

Yes – that’s right – try and try again. Be determined to achieve your goal. Unlike traditional print media, digital marketing lends itself well to continuous improvement by way of revisions and refinements—without suffering the penalties you would in print.

We are strong advocates of A/B testing until you find something that works. You can A/B test virtually everything from your audience and message, to your visuals and URL. What’s the best practice? It may depend on your platform and how long your campaign plans to run. We typically like to conduct and A/B test for two weeks, take a deep dive into the performance data after that period, then select the A or the B to continue running a campaign.

Watch [Them] Closely

Ok – this one is reaching, but nonetheless, we’re going for it.

Michael Myers, like other villains, stalks his victims. Do they have habits? Live with others? Live near others? While we could associate this behavior to the way you should create personas, that is way too creepy and highly inappropriate. Instead, we recommend that you watch your marketing campaigns’ performance closely.

Don’t launch a campaign and then leave it alone until the end of its cycle. Keep an eye on how it’s doing – a very, very close eye. How many clicks has your ad had? How much are people are engaging? What ads, pages, blogs are performing better than others? Which audiences are engaging the best? Gather insights from data, draw conclusions, and make some recommendations to improve your performance. You want to ensure your efforts are paying off, so follow the campaign closely. Make that your victim. Wait, was that too much?

Be the Michael Myers of Digital Marketing

We hope that in all of this ramble of a blog post that we didn’t completely creep you out, even though it is expected ahead of Halloween. If you take one thing away from this, it’s to be more strategic about marketing. Have a plan, define your audiences, gather insights, and refine your process until something works. It may sound easier than it is, but there are all types of tools and guides available to not only get you started, but to also make you successful at digital marketing. If you reach a point where you’re having trouble navigating how-to resources or getting results on challenging campaigns, give us a shout. We’re here to help.